User blog:Readerno33/Understanding the Spiral Zone in 2019 Part 1 (Or How long does it take for someone to be zoned?)
Spiral Zone was a unique cartoon when it aired back in 1987; no cartoon had the combination of technology, science and serious subject matter like it did. Back in 1987, we never gave our TV shows a second thought; now in the present day, it’s commonplace to do deep dives and commentaries on TV shows and films. Spiral Zone ''definitely lends itself to this deeper analysis and so for the first two blog entries, I want to do a deep dive of two questions: How long does it take for someone to be zoned? And how does the zoning process work? ''Spiral Zone puts information related to these questions out over the episodes but back in 1987 viewers didn’t really ask questions like these or put the pieces of information over the episodes together. Basically, in the 1980's we didn't really look at TV series (and especially cartoons) on a long scale. In looking at the series now these are some of the first questions that emerge. The second question was something that couldn’t be addressed at the time because the understanding of science (and neuroscience in particular) was so limited and contained to medicine. Now there’s a better understanding of science and medicine and the knowledge has been put out in general circulation via books and the internet, the second question is addressable by a layperson like myself. So rather than get into question #2, let me work on question #1 first and save the second question for the next blog entry. The question of how long it takes for someone to become a zoner arises because the series gives us conflicting images of the zoning process. In “Holographic Zone Battle” (episode 1) we see Hiro going into the zone before the commercial break and then see him zoned answering Overlord’s questions after the break. What amount of time has passed between the two points is unclear. In “Back to the Stone Age” (episode 5), we see the aborigines pulled into the zone by Reaper and becoming zoned in a relatively short amount of time; they go from being expose d to the zone to following Reaper’s commands in a scene of about 30 seconds. The zone can’t work that fast because the next episode “Small Packages” shows us General MacFarland and MCC exposed to a mini zone generator in the first half and it’s not until the second half of the episode that MacFarland and MCC are fully zoned and follow Overlord’s command to attack the Zone Riders. So, we have conflicting images of the zoning process over the first six episodes of the series. But the key to answ ering the question lies in finding as complete a depiction of the zoning process as possible in the series; there is such a depiction and we find it in episode 4 “Mission into Evil.” "Mission into Evil” is often described as the pilot of the series and this discussion lends more strength to that depiction because this episode lays out how the zoning process works. The depiction of Lt. Len Jacobs becoming a zoner is the most complete depiction of the process the series provides. Plus, as the action happens in New York, the episode allows us to measure out distances which help to work out a time frame from when Jacobs crash lands to when he is presented to Overlord. Again, much like Hiro’s zoning in “Holographic Zone Battle,” there’s a gap between Jacobs being presented to Overlord and still in the process of becoming a zoner and Overlord questioning a fully zoned Jacobs who provides his new master the information. But the time frame we can construct with the other information can help us fill in the gap and answer the question. So, let’s start building the time frame. The first piece in constructing the time frame is the images of where Jacobs crash lands in New York as MCC tracks his flight on their screen. When the plane is hit by the energy from the New York zone generator, the location on the screen has the plane on the Hudson R iver side of New York, so by that information we can put it that Jacobs crashes on the Hudson River side, somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen of all places (if you want to go further, you can use Roosevelt Island as a marker for the possible location of the crash site, but we only need a general location to build a time frame). We know that Overlord’s base in New York is the Chrysler Building so we have departure point and destination; using Google Maps (or any navigation app or system you have) you find that it’s 1.7 miles and 16 minutes by car between the two. Jacobs, however, doesn’t stay put at his Hell’s Kitchen crash site; he walks to Radio City Music Hall where he hides the Neutron-90. Put those two sites in Google Maps and you find that it takes 20 minutes to walk from the crash site to Radio City Music Hall. So, that means Jacobs has been in the zone for 20 minutes and he still hasn’t become fully zoned. So, the Black Widows head to the crash site, find Jacobs not there and head out to locate him. It takes 9 minutes by vehicle to get from the crash site to Radio City Music Hall, so now Jacobs has been in the zone for 30 minutes before the Black Widows capture him. So, a half-hour in the zone and Jacobs still is not fully a zoner. The Black Widows return to the Chrysler Building with Jacobs and the Neutron-90 container, which takes another 8 minutes according to Google Maps; so, by the time he appears before Overlord, Jacobs has been in the Spiral Zone for 40 minutes. His eyes are yellow and lesions appear under his eyes and are starting to devel op on his face, but he still not fully zoned. This ends the time frame; it’s not until almost two minutes later in the episode that we see Jacobs again fully zoned and answering Overlord’s questions. This is where the speculation comes in, but it provides a math equation: 40 minutes in the zone + the time Overlord waits until Jacobs is fully zoned = the time it takes to be fully zoned. 40 minutes is 2/3 of one hour so my speculation is that Overlord waits another 20 minutes for Jacobs to be fully zoned, which would mean that it takes an hour for a person to be fully zoned. So, now that I’ve worked up an answer of an hour, does that theory hold up when we look at other episodes? Well, the hour theory seems to work for both “Holographic Zone Battle” and “Small Packages”; in “Small Packages” we have the Zone Riders traveling to Minneapolis for a mission and returning to MCC plus a one-hour ultimatum, which means that MacFarland and MCC are exposed to the Spiral Zone for more than an hour. As for “Holographic Zone Battle” the hour theory does hold there since an hour would be a plausible amount of time for the Zone Riders to realize that Hiro has been targeted and respond to it. The place where it seems to fall apart is “Back to the Stone Age” as the aborigines are not exposed to the zone for an hour and yet they follow Reaper’s command. So, is there a way to explain this disconnect from the hour theory? I would argue that the scene involves a speeding up of time because we learn from “Mission into Evil” how the zoning process works. The scene is saying that since the viewers already know how the process works (especially as we're now five episodes in) we’ll jump to the end and show them as zoners especially in the interest of time. And this approach tends to be the one the series takes towards the zoning process: since you know how it ends, let’s just skip to the end and show the people as zoners. Nowadays we might point out this rushing to the end as an inconsistency of the series, but back in 1987 nobody was checking for inconsistencies as they do today. And with that the first question is answered; it takes an hour for a person to become a zoner. It’s important to realize the amount of time needed because at the end of “Mission to Evil” Jacobs begins to come out of the zoning process quicker than young Johnny who we see become a zoner at the beginning of the episode. Jacobs is able to resist Overlord’s command to destroy Dirk and the Zone Riders while Johnny appears to still strive to carry the order out as he was in the zone longer than Jacobs. So, question #1 has been answered; I'll address question #2 in my next blog post. Category:Blog posts